The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

in one of the barrack rooms itself, many a piece of news leaks out to us that way. For this is all, as you know, what the English call a ‘disaffected’ region, and ‘Mr. Chalmers’ has been with us for some time quite unmolested.”

      “Yet in this case extraordinary precautions may have been taken against any tidings reaching you,” urged Ewen. “And I have seen a letter from a member of General Churchill’s household which stated that a warrant had been issued on the fifteenth—six days ago. It was in fact that letter which brought me here, for I did not know my cousin’s whereabouts. But they certainly know it in Edinburgh. Someone has informed against him, Mrs. Stewart.”

      She was plainly shocked. “Oh, sir, that’s impossible! No one in these parts would do such a thing!”

      But Ardroy shook his head. “It may not have been a man from this district, but it has been done—and by someone who had speech with the Doctor recently. It remains now to circumvent the traitor. Supposing the child to have been mistaken, have you any trusty person whom you can send in the opposite direction, or in any other where you think ‘Mr. Chalmers’ likely to have gone?”

      “Only the gardener; but I will send him at once up the glen. Yet if Peggy is right, ’tis you will meet the Doctor, though I know not how far you’ll have to go, nor whether you had best——” She stopped and drew her brows together. “Nay, I believe he ever takes the track through the wood when he goes to Balquhidder, for the path down the open glen gives no shelter in case of danger. It will be best for you to go by the wood. You saw the burn, no doubt, as you came up to the house? Follow it a space down the glen till it goes into the wood, and go in with it. The track then runs by the water till it mounts higher than the burn; but you cannot miss it. And I must tell you,” she finished, “that Mr. Chalmers is wearing a black wig, which changes him very much; and commonly, unless he forgets, he makes to walk with a stoop to reduce his height. But you’ll be knowing his appearance well, perhaps?”

      “Very well indeed,” said Ewen, checking a sigh. “God grant I meet him! I am to begin by following the burn, then?” He repeated her simple instructions and went towards the door. Every moment he expected it to be flung wide by a redcoat.

      But he opened it, and there was nothing but the pale unclouded sun, almost balanced now on one of the crests opposite, the sharp sweet hill air, and a murmur of wind in the pines below the house. On the threshold Mrs. Stewart tendered him the packet of bread and meat, and a small voice from a lesser altitude was also heard offering turn, as sustentation, ‘my bread mannie’. It was true that this gift, withdrawn from too brief a sojourn in the oven, was far from being bread, but Ewen gravely accepted the amorphous and sticky object and wrapped it in his handkerchief. He could not refuse this fair-haired child whose tidings might be destined to prove the salvation of Archibald Cameron, and he stooped and kissed her. The little figure waving an adieu was the last thing he saw as he walked quickly away from the house towards the wood which clung about the downward course of the Calair.

      (2)

      As Mrs. Stewart had said, the track through the wood was quite easy to find and follow, and Ewen hurried along it at a very fast pace, since the farther from Stewart’s house he could encounter Archie the better. And yet, it might be a wild goose chase into which he had flung himself; it might be for the sake of a mere rumour that he, Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, had assaulted the future Earl of Stowe and stolen, or rather borrowed, a horse. The pistols he had certainly stolen, for he had not left them, as he had the horse, at the inn at Tyndrum, but had kept them with him, and might be glad of them yet. For though, contrary to all his expectations, he was in time to warn Archie (if only he could come upon him) he could not feel at ease about the warrant, even though its execution was so strangely delayed, or believe that machinery of the kind, once set in motion, would cease to revolve.

      So he hastened on; the path, fairly wide here, having quitted the stream, was full of holes crammed with damp, dead leaves; through the bare oaks and ashes and the twisted pine boughs on his left he saw the sun disappear behind the heights opposite. As its rays were withdrawn the air grew at once colder, and an uneasy wind began to move overhead; it left the oaks indifferent, but the pines responded to its harper’s touch. Ardroy had lived his life too much in the open air and in all weathers to be much mentally affected by wind, yet the sound tuned with his anxious thoughts almost without his being aware of it.

      So far he had not met or even seen a single person, but now, as he heard steps approaching, his pulse quickened. He was wrong—it was not Archie, for there came into sight an elderly man bent under a load of sticks which he had evidently been gathering in the wood. No word issued from him as they passed each other, but he turned, sticks and all, and stared after the stranger. Meanwhile Ewen hastened on; he must, he thought, have come a considerable way by now, and for the first time he began to wonder what he should do if he got to Balquhidder itself without encountering his cousin, and to regret that he had not asked Mrs. Stewart’s advice about such a contingency.

      It was while he was turning over this difficulty in his mind that he came round a bend in the woodland path and perceived, at the foot of a tree, a man with one knee on the ground, examining something at its foot. Was it? . . . it looked like . . . Yes! He broke into a run, and was upon Doctor Cameron before the latter had time to do more than rise to his feet and utter an amazed:

      “Ewen! Ewen! . . . It can’t be! How, and why——”

      And not till that moment did it occur to Ewen that all this had happened before, in different surroundings. “I am come to warn you—once again, Archie!” he said, seizing him by the arms in his earnestness. “You must come no farther—you must not return to Stewart’s house. There’s a warrant out against you from Edinburgh, and soldiers coming from Inversnaid. Your hiding-place has been betrayed.”

      “Betrayed!” said Archibald Cameron in incredulous tones. “Dear lad, you must be mistaken. There’s but six or seven people know that I am in these parts, and I could answer for everyone of them.”

      Ewen was not shaken. It was like Archie not to believe in treachery. “You may think that,” he replied, “but it has been done. I have the fact on too good authority to doubt it. I have seen Mrs. Stewart, and told her, and have come to intercept you. You must not go back there.”

      Archie slid his arm into his. “But first, my dear Ewen, I must learn whence you come and how? I know that you escaped from Fort William before the New Year, but——”

      “I’ll tell you everything in proper time,” broke in his kinsman, “but in the name of good sense let us find a more concealed place to talk in than this path!—What is occupying you by this tree, pray?” For at the mention of leaving the path Doctor Cameron’s gaze had strayed back to the spot over which he had been stooping. Ewen could see nothing there but some bright-coloured toadstools.

      “It is, I think, a rare fungus,” said Archie meditatively. “I should like—well, why not?” He stooped and picked one, and then allowed Ewen to draw him away into the undergrowth, just there waist-high or more, and find a spot under an oak, where, if they chose to sit or crouch, they would be invisible from the track.

      But for the moment they stood beneath the oak-tree looking at each other, the elder man still holding the little orange toadstool between his fingers. Even though the black tie-wig, in place of the brown one he usually wore, or of his own fair, slightly greying hair, did change Archibald Cameron, even though Ewen’s gaze, scanning his face closely, did seem to find there a hint of a fresh line or two about the kindly mouth, he looked much the same as when Ardroy had last set eyes on him in the dark little croft up at Slochd nan Eun. And, as he might have done then, he wanted most to know of Ewen’s affairs.

      But Ewen took him to task. “Are you fey, Archie, that you waste time over questions of no moment, and won’t believe what I tell you? Someone has betrayed you and sent information to Edinburgh which has been acted upon. To come by the knowledge of this and of your whereabouts I have made a lifelong enemy of a man I liked, committed an assault on him, stolen a horse, and, worse than all, read a private letter by stealth. You must at least pay some heed to me, and pay it